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Blogs Minorities in the Media Ain't You Gon' Edit Dat??? by Drew Stewart
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Blogs Minorities in the Media Ain't You Gon' Edit Dat??? by Drew Stewart | Ain't You Gon' Edit Dat??? by Drew Stewart |
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| Written by Drew Stewart | |
| Monday, 25 June 2007 | |
 President Bush isn’t the only one who manages to mangle the English language every time he speaks. A large percentage of a small, celebrated class of men couldn’t put two grammatically correct sentences together with the help of a dictionary, a power drill, and a tub of super glue. I’m referring to black athletes.  Most of the time, I cringe when white sports reporters shove a microphone in a black athlete's face for a post-game interview. I find myself having to focus extra hard to decipher the player’s message out of the inarticulate morass of slang and poor grammar. The most common blunders are “we wuz”, “cuz”, “yamean”, “ain’t”, “you know what I’m sayin’”, stutter and stammer, “dis and dat”, and “Coach had told us to…”. However, this piece addresses the growing trend among reporters to quote black athletes word-for-word. This is NOT an attack on black athletes. (I’ll leave that to Bill Cosby.) However, if this piece was a discussion of the plight black athletes, I’d much rather place the blame where it belongs—on the big-time NCAA D-1 programs, college professors, high school coaches, and high school teachers who are neglecting their responsibility to educate the young athletes’ malleable minds. In a press conference after losing game one of this year’s NBA Finals, LeBron James lamented his 4-of-16 shooting performance: “A lot of shots I took is shots that I make.” After game 3, a reporter asked James to discuss his mentality heading into game four down three games to the San Antonio Spurs. James replied, “We have to come out with aggressive and just continue to play hard. We gave ourself a chance to win tonight and that’s all we can ask for.”  In the morning sports section, the reporter writing a story on James might take two seconds to clean up James’ statements by switching an is to an are, adding –ness to aggressive to make it a noun, and changing ourself to ourselves to match the plural subject, we. Or, he might not, and therein lies the problem. More and more, I’ve noticed sportswriters are using abusing their discretion to edit players’ less than perfect speech. I’ve heard poor grammar and excessive phrases spew from the mouths of star athletes such as Michael Vick, Mike Tyson, and Gary Sheffield. But it isn't just the brothers. I’ve also heard it from white stars such as Peyton Manning, Boomer Esiason, Roger Clemens, and a slew of NASCAR drivers. But can you guess which group of players gets their grammatical errors excised from the morning paper or sports magazine most often? The easiest solution is to put pressure on print media executives to mandate that sports writers and journalists edit everyone’s speech or no ones at all. However, if no players’ speech was edited, print media would still seem to feature more black athletes with poor grammar since a disproportionate number of NBA and NFL interviews feature black players. And if any league tried to impose mandatory speech classes for its players, the policy would be labeled as a racist and meet fierce opposition from fans, players, and civil rights leaders. The best the leagues could do is to hold voluntary "media relations" classes for players who want to polish their public speaking skills so that they can put their best foot forward during interviews and press conferences (being articulate equals more endorsements which means more money). The better, long-term solution focuses its crosshairs closer to the source of the problem: a lack of attention paid to public speaking at American colleges and universities. Why not put pressure on college and universities to require that athletes take public speaking courses (like the University of West Virginia and Wake Forest University already do)? And why stop with the athletes? Hopefully, all college students are aiming to achieve great feats in life. To achieve anything meaningful in their lives, they will often need to speak with credibility before groups, large and small. One day, students will have to command the attention of an audience and stumbling over multisyllabic words won’t help—unless they’re planning to run for President of the United States. In which case, it might not hurt to strategically insert a few phrases like “sayin”, “cuz”, “ain’t”, and “wuz” in a speech. Shucks, it jus' might getem’ elected. Comments
(8)
How about these athletes just shut up and play! Kobe....
Yes. I agree with you wholeheartedly.
I agree with you Drew! I thought I was the only person who cringed when a young black athlete got on a microphone.
I don't agree with you "wholeheartedly". This piece can be seen as an attack on poor people. Athlete's ability to articulate seems to corrolate with their socioeconomic background. Are you saying, "poor people who get money and are in front of the media should learn the "King's English"? Forget that! A minimal ability to effectively communicate is sufficient. Lebron gets his point across. Besides, the more interviews, etc. an athlete does, the better they get. No courses needed. On the other hand, people like Bush should be ashamed of themselves for not being able to communicate effectively.
Let's stop blaming "the man" for neglecting us as a people. Let's put the blame where it needs to be placed, and that's on the shoulders of the parents. I'm tired of our people whining for handouts!! This is a problem that should and could be remedied at home.
A conservative friend of mine said Bush uses incorrect grammar to level with the common American. just FYI. I agree but school never taught me how to speak properly, maybe justr write well. Learning how to speak, publicly or otherwise, starts at home with your parents. Someones calls you it's yes not yeah or what etc. It was my mother who stressed that. My grandmother reinforced it. We can blame institutions for centuries bit it all starts in the home with the parent(s).
Interesting Point Stew, but what do you expect? Athletes like Lebron have been given a academic pardon for the pursuit of athletic glory. The only suprising thing in my opinion is that the NBA doesn't play a larger role in polishing there employees speaking skills before airing their comments on national television, I can't think of any other corporation that would do something like this (besides the NFL that is...lol)
Agreed.
Mike, the NBA will not make any more or less money if their star athletes can speak correctly. They pay them to play. When they are no longer good at that, they stop paying them. It is an unfortunate situation when schools advance students because of their athletic prowess, however, we cannot totally blame the schools. I agree with Mr. Scott that learning to speak properly comes from home. When people ask why my southern accent is hidden, or call me articulate (gag), I always credit my grandparents and parents. Regarding Mr. Bush.... isn't it just part of his appeal?? J/k Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.       |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 August 2007 ) |
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